


All Things Beautiful and Bright (sink in the night)

by cognomen



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Complete, Found Families, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 08:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12164973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: Her encounters with Poe Dameron are like a stop motion peek into what life could have been. The first time Leia meets him, he’s a surprisingly quiet three year old, with dark eyes and long eyelashes, all baby-fine curls on his head and the habit of keeping three spit-slick fingers between his teeth when he feels insecure.“He’ll warm up,” Shara tells her. Leia is already getting big in the belly, and has some brief, idyllic fantasy of giving up politics and escaping - like Kes Dameron and Shara Bey had - to some place where family came first.It’s an idle wish, and Leia watches it vanish, as if on a gentle breeze.





	All Things Beautiful and Bright (sink in the night)

Her encounters with Poe Dameron are like a stop motion peek into what life could have been. The first time Leia meets him, he’s a surprisingly quiet three year old, with dark eyes and long eyelashes, all baby-fine curls on his head and the habit of keeping three spit-slick fingers between his teeth when he feels insecure.

“He’ll warm up,” Shara tells her. Leia is already getting big in the belly, and has some brief, idyllic fantasy of giving up politics and escaping - like Kes Dameron and Shara Bey had - to some place where family came first.

It’s an idle wish, and Leia watches it vanish, as if on a gentle breeze.

“When he gets used to you, he’ll never stop talking,” Shara assures Leia. “We had to go through a trial period too.”

Leia, belabored, crouches down. She’d found that worked well for the Ewoks. A child was different, but looming over anyone was a bad way to make friends. 

“Hi, Poe,” she says.

His own name is a summons he can’t ignore, and he dutifully lifts his gaze to her face, fingers in his mouth. It’s a contract between them - something eases in him when he sees that she’d fold herself down for him. She doesn’t demand any contact - she’d given a lot of begrudging hugs as a child and resolved that she would never demand them for herself, nor of her children, regardless of her status as ambassador and princess.

“Hi,” his voice is high and soft, muffled around his own skin. But he smiles, and pulls his hand away, and Leia sees the echo of his father and a glimmer of the man he will be, and feels with a certainty that they’ll know each other a long time.

By the end of the visit, Poe Dameron has unfolded to the point where Leia wonders how she’d ever taken him for shy, and supposes that the galaxy is a better place for boys to grow, now.   
And that she must do her best to keep it that way.

-

She meets him next beyond a point where she wouldn’t have recognized him, if she hadn’t known the name and his mother so well that she sees - while undoubtedly masculine - her perfect echo in his face.

This time, too, he’s bending himself into a shape that’s unnatural to him, doing what’s right but afraid of the results. Not because of the consequences for himself, but because of what it means that the galaxy isn’t listening to him. 

They both now have missing puzzle pieces. Leis is not so blind that she can miss how the voids and hollows in their life fit together. He’s lost Shara Bey some time ago - and she’s heard of her son only in reports for all these long years. Reconnaissance and rumor. 

She can’t let that get to her. The Resistance needs Poe - more than she needs a surrogate son to mother as a nurse aid for her own feelings.

This time, his uncertainty vanishes quickly, and she has to hold her smile when his forms.

He agrees to carry his squad away from the New Republic with a ‘Yes Ma’am’ and nothing more. She knows, then, that he’s seen it. The danger that’s coming, convalescing out there somewhere in space.

It’s not just on the virtue of Leia’s construct - of what lore the universe has assigned to her. He knows the trouble, truly and intimately, as a personal thing.

“Before you go,” Leia says, holding him back. She wants to see if his smile falters or worry blooms in his expression. All stays clear.

“You should contact Kes,” she says, as kindly as she can. “Let him know it may be a while before he hears from you again.”

Poe’s a true believer. He says ‘yes’ like he knows his father will be proud, and Leia pretends not to know how much Kes Dameron will hate it.

-

She’s never unhappy with her choice, but there are times - especially when dealing with the Senate - that she wishes it hadn’t been necessary to steal him away. If the senators would just open their eyes and pay attention got the changes happening around them, Leia is sure - she likes to _believe_ \- that they would take up the reins of Resistance themselves.

She finds new ways to convince them to help every week. That’s _her_ job.

Poe catches her fresh off her transport ship to make his report, in coveralls and with his grease-smeared hands tucked behind his back. He falls into step with her without needing to be asked. He has learned that she does not like to meet in her office after a session at the Senate - the urge to move and bleed out some of her aggravation through sheer manual motion is too much.

“I’ve got more pilots than ships now, officially,” Poe says. It’s not a complaint. Instead it’s a half a tally mark to victory points. “Oddy Muva is a good mechanic, but he’d be better in a ship.”

Leia agrees. “Can we get any of the old T-65‘s or salvage Y-Wings into flight shape?”

“Those Y-Wings barely flew thirty years ago,” Poe says. “There’s three on the ground, but the parts have only kept one flying. The other two get closer to being empty shells every time we gotta repair the one that _can_ fly.”

She’s always hated the logistics of freedom fighting. Too often she has to tell good men that no matter how noble the cause, the support - monetary and political - isn’t there.

Leia points an accusing finger at Poe, and he holds up his hands in the only surrender he’ll ever give.

“Steal some TIE fighters,” she says. It’s not serious, but it makes Poe smile and her feel good. It sounds more optimistic than ‘someone’s going to die when we stop playing war’, even though it was true and spare pilots were as practical as spare ships in that circumstance. 

Of course it isn’t his job to consider either of those things. So, she goes back to hers; begging and harassing their reluctant allies both stolid and fairweather.

In the end she comes up with two ships saved from the salvage yard - retired, but otherwise functional, and she’s glad Oddy is a decent mechanic.

She _doesn’t_ expect Poe to actually turn up with the TIES and when he parades a pair of them in stolen from a supply shipment, it pains Leia to put the ships away in a storage bank for a rainy day - for a time when going undercover might become necessary.

-

Poe doesn’t mention them again. Leia knows he hasn’t forgotten. Not when they lose L’ulo and his old A-wing at nearly the same time Oddy vanishes. The surplus pilot issue is a thing of the past. In the meantime, they have other things to worry about. Fuel, for one.

Leia watches Poe do amazing things with the remainders of Rapier Squadron and feels a pride she’s always wanted to feel for family that she can’t claim.

“I wish we had more time to drill,” Poe laments, as they stand together to inspect the recovered fuel tanker and the victorious pilots who uncovered it.

“It’ll only get worse,” Leia tells him. “Until it’s over. I need you to help me get us there before it really takes hold again.”

“Don’t worry, General, Poe says, straightening his posture as he does, pushing aside his weariness and worries. “The First Order can’t possibly get as far as the Empire did.”

She wishes she had five more young men like Poe, who could stand at the podiums of the Galactic Senate and talk pride back into the pacified politicians.

“I hope you’re right,” Leia says. “In the meantime, drill where you can. _Whenever_ you can. I know it seems hectic now, but a lot of things are just grinding into motion. Soon enough we’ll have trouble finding time to breathe.”

“Is that permission to use some of that fuel?” Poe asks, enduring her glare with a brilliant grin as he moves away at the beckon of his friends.

She thinks often about her pilots. Who they are, where they come from, what she asks them to give. If Leia thinks of Poe as a son, she always does so with the caveat that she’s already proven willing to give hers up.

-

Leia sees the admonishment in Kes Dameron’s eyes when he comms her to tell her that Poe isn’t dead.

She has to sit down for the news.

“He’s - rough,” Kes says. “There’s something different in his eyes. He doesn’t want to tell me about it.”

Leia restrains herself from pressing him about the mission. _Did he find Lor San Tekka? Did he get the_ map?

“I’m sorry,” she says instead. Leia knows she has no right to how much of Kes’ life she’s claimed, or how she thinks of his only remaining family as hers. 

“Well,” Kes says, awkward. His initial vitriol spent, he sits back and considers her through the holovid screen. “His droid, BeeBee-Ate, isn’t with him.”

“I’ll get Threepio on it,” Leia assures Kes.

“Poe says whatever his mission was, it’s with BeeBee-Ate now,” Kes reveals. Leia restrains her urge to summon Threepio immediately. 

“That’s less important than having my best pilot back,” she says. “And considerably less important than you having your son back.”

“He says he saw Kylo Ren,” Kes tells her, sounding like he doesn’t want to.

It hits Leia like a blow. She _knows_ \- has for a long time - that Ben is still alive. She can sense it, distant and muffled like the second heartbeat she’d felt while she carried him. Some part of the boy she raised is still in there, and she can sense it even at this distance. But, it’s a captive of - or participant to, if she doesn’t kid herself - Snoke’s agenda. 

“Active?” she asks, firming herself against the answer.

“Working to the same ends as the First Order,” he says.

_Of course,_ Leia allows. _Wherever someone claims to want to bring peace and absolute order to the galaxy, there’s a Sith or the Dark Side right behind them._

She must say nothing for too long. Kes’ gaze softens. “I wanted you to hear it from me, first. I don’t know if Poe... I don’t think he wants to tell you about it at all.”

Leia smiles, just a little. “That’s a sign that one of us raised a child right.”

Kes laughs, but it sounds a little hollow. “I won’t take credit from my wife for that. I’m not sure I would have done it, if I thought it would all come around again in thirty years.”

Leia wonders sometimes, if they aren’t all trapped in this cycle until something that none of them understands gives. Something in the nature of humanity itself. She’s felt the same things Kes has a few times - more, when she was facing the blank faces of the Senate and yelling about the writing on the wall, trying to cut the snake off at the head and other metaphors for stopping this before it killed half of another generation.

“You mean ‘fight for it’?” she asks.

“Be a father,” Kes answers, with a tight, frank smile. “I can go through this a second time, though it would be easier...”

He trails off, and doesn’t finish his sentence. Leia senses the end of it, with the sort of insight she sometimes gets from the Force. _It would be easier with Shara._

“But Poe should never have had to go through it a _first_ time. That’s why I fought,” Kes finishes.

Leia knows. She hears it from her own heart, often. What if there _was_ no Snoke? No First Order? What if she and Mon Mothma and the first Rebellion had fought harder to find and stamp out the last seeds scattered by the burning Empire. But though victorious at last, her Rebellion was exhausted. They all - like Kes and Shara after the battle of Endor - needed to be done. To have won, and earned some rest.

There’s really no questioning what the alternative was - there hadn’t _been_ one. After Jakku, after the Liberation Day disaster and everything else, the Rebellion dissolved. They weren’t an army, not like the Stormtroopers. They had lives and homes to rebuild. Leia could no more have held them than a maverick comet with her bare hands.

“You sure you won’t come back to us?” Leia asks, hoping a joke and some charm might change the mood. “You can’t be _that_ attached to farming.”

Kes barks a laugh, shaking his head. “You should try it sometime, it might surprise you. I’ll send some koyo fruit back with Poe. If any of them survive the trip outside his stomach, you can tell me how you feel about farming when you try one.”

-

When Poe returns, he looks as rough as Kes promised - bent, certainly, but not broken. Leia examines the bruising and abrasion at Poe’s temple, the cut turned to scar on his cheek.

“You want to go to medical?” she asks him. His eyes are bright and alert in a way that suggests his eagerness covers over something at depth, an internal wound, but not of the organs.

“No ma’am,” Poe says. He draws himself up straight, hands behind his back in a parade rest. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather get into a cockpit.”

Leia does a quick risk assessment-vs-desperation calculation in her head. As usual, desperation wins out.

“You can debrief me on the way to the runway. I have something for _you_ that just come in from Takodana, too.” 

He follows, and Leia doesn’t let her worries come along.

“So, tell me about your escape,” she says, to make it easy on both of them. She doesn’t know if she’s ready to hear what the son of the First Order has done to the son of the Resistance.

“Well,” Poe says, “I can only take credit for piloting the escape vehicle. Um, I thought - well, I was ready to-”

Poe stops himself, and his expression changes. Brightens. He starts his story again.

“There was this stormtrooper,” Poe explains, finding the positive, the bright lights in the darkness. “Finn. He helped me escape.”

-

She watches the screens. Every combat. Every time her pilots fly, all the times she puts troops on the ground. This time it’s real and vital and different, bringing with it the ghosts of Hoth and Endor.

It’s just lights on the display, a crude approximation of the human lives at stake, but Leia knows each of these blinking stars by name.

Around her, the light begins to dim. Starkiller Base is pulling in the sun, swallowing it to leave the world darker as so many stars surrounding it wink out on her display

But her faith doesn’t waver, not while she can watch the indicator for Black Leader on the board. She knows two things in the galaxy; this time, she’ll change the course of history, pursue the last ragged remains of the First Order unto the death, and that she’ll end the day with only one son.

Leia couldn’t say what she wants the outcome to be. No one asks her. Whether she expects Han to come home with Ben, sheepish and angry and ready to pay for his crimes, or for Poe to emerge from the burning ashes of the base, honed into an instrument keen enough to cut through Kylo Ren. Brilliant and ready to walk on, like Luke had after the first Death Star, to the great new future. 

She knows that she will live with it; own and possess it, no matter the results.

-

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> -Title from Peter Gabriel's Signal to Noise:  
> man i'm losing sound and sight   
> of all those who can tell me wrong from right   
> when all things beautiful and bright   
> sink in the night


End file.
